Public Realm in Canadian Cities - Developments

[Martin Mtl]

Place Shamrock, near Jean-Talon market in Rosemont (Montreal)

Instant success!


https://twitter.com/Monmontreal?lang=fr


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-1O4sLXoAY0WWX.jpg


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-1O4sKXkAI7lzH.jpg


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-QqidtWsAACD1S.jpg

Before / after




https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-z2Qd-WsAAmm_a.jpg




https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-z2-xoX4AEvz31.jpg

[Dr Awesomesauce]

^Love it. So simple, yet so effective.

[Chadillaccc]

Wow that is a beautiful transformation! I'll take a dozen please.

[Tone]

La Place des Anciens Combattants upcoming redevelopment in Rimouski

Actual - the parking space will be relocated on a parkade.


Option 1 - ''La croisée des chemins''


Option 2 - ''La coulée douce''

http://www.ville.rimouski.qc.ca/webc...tation_PAC.pdf

It will be located across the street from this other upcoming redevelopment which will also include a public square. Construction is slated for october with the demolition of what's left of La Grande Place shopping mall.

[TorontoDrew]

Source: https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2019/07...ld-lpat-ruling

The City's vision for the proposed Rail Deck Park in Downtown Toronto has been protected by a landmark decision of the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT) which dismissed an appeal of a 2017 City Council-approved Official Plan Amendment (OPA) that designated the air rights above the rail corridor between Bathurst Street and Blue Jays Way as park space.

In response to the news, Toronto Mayor John Tory issued a statement declaring "Today's decision about Rail Deck Park from the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal is good news for Toronto and its future. This reaffirms the City's initial intentions to make this land available for an important community development that will ultimately be a very popular park."

Toronto’s Chief Planner and Executive Director Gregg Lintern, echoed Tory's sentiments stating, "Rail Deck Park is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a larger park in the downtown area. It will create a unique and flexible space that can accommodate a variety of different activities."

The City's official press release states that the City "looks forward to working with the various stakeholders in the rail corridor, including Metrolinx, to make this project a reality" and that they are pursuing something that will be recognized as "a transformative city-building project which will be recognized on the world stage." The City's 2017 study determined that the park might cost $1.5 B to construct. The City has approximately $400 M in a fund to create new parkland in Toronto's central area. It is not clear how much of that could be used on this one project, nor where the remainder of the necessary funds will be found. Chicago's Millennium Park was similarly built over a rail corridor and raised much of its funding from private sector corporate benefactors.

[Spocket]

I know that this won't gain me any friends around here but I swear, Montreal is the only city in Canada that I think really fits the bill of "international". When I think of culture and Canada, Montreal is the go to city for me.

[CityTech]

^ I think Montreal and Toronto both do. They both feel like "world cities" to me, with differing sets of strengths and weaknesses.

One thing where I would agree with you with respect to Montreal is that it feels more "complete". Montreal feels "undergrown", while Toronto feels "overgrown"--in other words, it feels like Toronto is a city that wasn't meant to be as big as it is, while Montreal feels like a city that was meant to be bigger than it would up.

This "overgrown" feeling in Toronto, IMO, does take away from the "big world city" feel. Although you definitely get the sense that Toronto is fixing this. Give it another 20 years and I doubt Toronto will have this problem much more.

[TorontoDrew]

Originally Posted by Spocket

I know that this won't gain me any friends around here but I swear, Montreal is the only city in Canada that I think really fits the bill of "international". When I think of culture and Canada, Montreal is the go to city for me.

That's a little ironic seeing as Toronto's population is the most International in North America. I'd be willing to bet whatever you can find in Montreal you can find in Toronto but not the other way around.

[le calmar]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

That's a little ironic seeing as Toronto's population is the most International in North America. I'd be willing to bet whatever you can find in Montreal you can find in Toronto but not the other way around.

I don't think he was referring to the demographics, but I can't tell for sure. Since this thread is about public realm I guess this is what he was referring to. Montreal "punches above its weight" in this regard imo thanks to the legacy of present and past events such as the F1 Grand Prix, the Olympics, Expo 67, and in the case of built form, the International District where some international organizations are based. All these things have left/continue to leave their mark in the urban fabric and contribute to that feeling that this city is a world city despite the fact it is not the largest in the country.

[Calgarian]

Vancouver also has an international feel, not on the same level as the big 2, but it's there. Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa are starting to look at spaces in a better way, but still feel like small cities on the world scale.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by le calmar

I don't think he was referring to the demographics, but I can't tell for sure. Since this thread is about public realm I guess this is what he was referring to. Montreal "punches above its weight" in this regard imo thanks to the legacy of present and past events such as the F1 Grand Prix, the Olympics, Expo 67, and in the case of built form, the International District where some international organizations are based. All these things have left/continue to leave their mark in the urban fabric and contribute to that feeling that this city is a world city despite the fact it is not the largest in the country.

At the institutional level Montreal is more international. Canada has made great efforts and spent a lot of money over the years to make it so.

[kool maudit]

Toronto and Montreal frustrate me in different ways. When I am in Montreal, I miss Toronto's soaring downtown, its human crush, its ability to fill all of its main streets with life to the degree that it spills onto the side streets.

In Toronto, however, I miss Montreal's elegant residential blocks, the urbanity of its extensive triplex neighbourhoods, its squares and parks and its manicured public realm.

Canada did not have enough urban heft in the crucial era to fully animate both competing cities, and it shows.

We must now attempt, in our era of super-sized lots, identikit condos and blank, broken streetwalls, to bring them both up to standard.

Streets like Atwater, Notre-Dame, and even St. Laurent irritate me with their pallid quality, their oversupply of dead pockets. The inner-city housing vernacular of, say, East York, is absurd; it is like something from Cleveland or Buffalo.

Montreal never builds to a crescendo.

Toronto's span of dignified urban housing is miniscule.

Each city constantly needs the qualities of the other.

[kool maudit]

Montreal, it must be said, does more with less. Its metropolitan economy is very small for a city of its size (Stockholm's is larger despite a metro area less than half Montreal's size; Seattle's is more than double Montreal at a slightly smaller pop) but its projects, particularly infrastructure projects, are ambitious and aesthetically considered.

Only Toronto can do (built) things at something like a metropolitan scale, though. You just need a certain financial depth before things like The Well, Mirvish Village, or Mirvish+Gehry start to appear.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Toronto and Montreal frustrate me in different ways. When I am in Montreal, I miss Toronto's soaring downtown, its human crush, its ability to fill all of its main streets with life to the degree that it spills onto the side streets.

In Toronto, however, I miss Montreal's elegant residential blocks, the urbanity of its extensive triplex neighbourhoods, its squares and parks and its manicured public realm.

Yep.

[GreaterMontréal]

You just need a certain financial depth before things like The Well, Mirvish Village, or Mirvish+Gehry start to appear.

Montréal will have Royalmount.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by GreaterMontréal

Montréal will have Royalmount.

I’m sure you’re joking. I hope you are.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

That's a little ironic seeing as Toronto's population is the most International in North America. I'd be willing to bet whatever you can find in Montreal you can find in Toronto but not the other way around.

This is likely true... technically.

But its importance, at the risk of being controversial, is often overplayed.

I mean, what tangible difference does it make if one city has 2150 Samoans and another has 625?

Also some cities even smaller ones will always have greater concentrations of certain groups than certain other larger cities.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Toronto and Montreal frustrate me in different ways. When I am in Montreal, I miss Toronto's soaring downtown, its human crush, its ability to fill all of its main streets with life to the degree that it spills onto the side streets.

In Toronto, however, I miss Montreal's elegant residential blocks, the urbanity of its extensive triplex neighbourhoods, its squares and parks and its manicured public realm.

Canada did not have enough urban heft in the crucial era to fully animate both competing cities, and it shows.

We must now attempt, in our era of super-sized lots, identikit condos and blank, broken streetwalls, to bring them both up to standard.

Streets like Atwater, Notre-Dame, and even St. Laurent irritate me with their pallid quality, their oversupply of dead pockets. The inner-city housing vernacular of, say, East York, is absurd; it is like something from Cleveland or Buffalo.

Montreal never builds to a crescendo.

Toronto's span of dignified urban housing is miniscule.

Each city constantly needs the qualities of the other.

This post and your next one are good examples of why, although Toronto gets the "win", it is never really a TKO. Toronto you could say wins on points.

Though the TKO may be within reach eventually.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

At the institutional level Montreal is more international. Canada has made great efforts and spent a lot of money over the years to make it so.

It is far from just the efforts of the feds that give Montreal its international feel.

In fact most of the stuff that has been cited or that I can think of is not primarily the feds' doing.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It is far from just the efforts of the feds that give Montreal its international feel.

In fact most of the stuff that has been cited or that I can think of is not primarily the feds' doing.

I was thinking of the post that cited Expo 67 and the Olympics, plus institutions like ICAO and the UN Biodiversity office.